The design of a newspaper provides a particular style and flavour discernible by the reader.
As used in this context, `design` refers to the graphical rules or guidelines that govern how elements (such as headlines, pictures and text) should be used to construct newsholes, including the number and type of elements which may or may not be used in certain circumstances, the size and position of those elements in each case, direction on suitable typography, and usage of other graphic devices such as borders and colour.
The design style of a newspaper is often considered critical, for a number of reasons. For example, it has great bearing on the newspaper's "appeal" to different readers (such as, large heavy headlines in a tabloid, or smaller "dignified" headlines in a "quality" broadsheet). The readers are attracted to buy the paper and this obviously helps to determine that paper's market. Designs also serve the purpose of giving the newspaper a unique or distinct look so that they are distinguished from their competitors. For these reasons, very often newspapers spend considerable time, effort and money on determining their design "style".
Currently, in many publishing environments, the design of a newspaper is controlled by only a few people and is communicated--often verbally--from one person to another. These people may or may not also be responsible for laying out the newspaper (that is, implementing their own design) but, typically, layout is performed by people who did not determine the design style but who must learn it and implement it as faithfully as possible.
As a result, a number of problems and issues may and do arise with newspaper layout:
1. It is possible for the design to be implemented incorrectly in some cases, due to a misunderstanding or ignorance of its requirements, or pressure of workload, or lack of skill by the layout operator. This may result in a glaring and undesirable deviation from "style". PA1 2. It is possible under the existing arrangements for the design and style of a newspaper to change over a period of time, due to changing interpretation of how it should be applied, and/or a build-up of a series of minor "styles" inaccuracies. Although this change may be subtle and may occur over a period of a number of years, any change is often noticed by readers of the newspaper, with possible negative effects on the readership of the newspaper. PA1 3. A layout, although it may be creatively faithful to the design guidelines, may be inefficient in its usage of space, resulting in expensive wastage of space and/or less news being put in the paper. PA1 4. Computer systems are available with electronic tools that facilitate the building of layouts. However, these systems will require the layout to be constructed manually using those tools, which is labour-intensive and time-consuming. In addition, these systems provide little or no guidance on the paper's style and do not assist the layout operator in determining how layouts should be designed. They merely permit the layout operator to build the layout, once the operator has personally determined what should be built. PA1 a newshole is filled in accordance with a design, and PA1 resizing of the newshole takes place if the fit is not in accordance with predetermined criteria. PA1 A. allowing the user to predefine relationships between the various components of the newshole, which relationships determine each component's size and position relative to the others', and/or PA1 B. permits automatic recalculation of each component's size and position so that the newshole can be filled. PA1 A. Predefine suitable layouts and store these into a database and/or PA1 B. Determine and predefine the conditions or circumstances in which each of these layouts may be considered suitable for use and/or PA1 C. Define, for each of these layouts, rules governing the behaviour of each element of layout, as to its size, position and typographic style and so on. This facility allows the publication to predefine relationships between the various components of the newshole, which relationships determine each component's size and position relative to the others'. PA1 A. Allows the user of the database to specify the general type and style of the layout desired for the current newshole, in a quick, easy and intuitive manner and/or PA1 B. Determines which layouts are or are not suitable or correct for usage in the current newshole, in accordance with the predefined rules and taking into account the specified desires of the database user and/or PA1 C. Graphically displays for the user the correct or suitable layouts and allows selection of one of them and/or PA1 D. Prevents the user of the database from selecting unsuitable or incorrect layouts and/or PA1 E. Automatically builds the final layout, including transparently resizing the selected layout and its elements to suit the new size specified by the user, in accordance with the rules that have been defined for that layout and/or PA1 F. Automatically monitors any further edits that the user may make to the layout after it is drawn, and measures these against the predefined design rules. Depending on the nature and circumstances of those changes and the dictates of the predefined design rules, the present invention may further assist the user by: automatically adjusting the layout (or its elements) to accommodate or suit the user's manual edits; and/or suggesting that an entirely different layout would be more appropriate according to the predefined design style; and/or allowing the user to accept that suggestion, at which point the software may automatically build the new layout and/or use it to replace the previous one.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,354 and GB 2,246,102 disclose how newsholes can be arranged to fill a given area (such as a page). However, they could not be used to generate the newsholes themselves.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,829,470, 5,287,443, 5,113,488, 4,755,955 and 5,079,724 all relate to different aspects of manipulating type and/or images to fit a given shape. These disclosures do not reach the concept of publication design rules, and they would not assist in any way in actually helping to build or determine the newshole design. These inventions address mechanical problems that may arise once it becomes necessary to pour text and/or images into those shapes to fill them up.